iOS 9 and content blockers: Safari can still pull down the full page on a per-site basis

Crystal is one of the upcoming content blocking apps for Safari in iOS 9, and its developer, Dean Murphy, has been kind enough to let me help test it.

Installation and setup is pretty simple and akin to keyboards in iOS 8. You install the app, then go to Settings > Safari > Content Blockers to toggle it.

In its “pre-beta” status, Crystal is dead simple. Enable it, and it starts blocking advertisements and tracking tools on all sites in Safari. There are no controls yet to allow certain types of content, ads, or whitelisted websites, so I hope that’s in the plans.

One of the nice perks of Safari in iOS 9 is that, even if you have blockers installed, you can long-press the reload button to reload the site with nothing blocked.

Update: In the original version of this post, I thought this reload behavior was unique to and provided by Crystal. Turns out it’s a Safari feature.